With the rise of the mobile internet, more and more content is generated on-the-spot with smart phones like the iPhone or Android phones. This content has a rich quality and includes media items such as pictures and videos, which are geotagged. Also, people are feeding real-time data that is geotagged to services such as twitter indicating what activity they are doing, how they are feeling and where they are.
Another new development is to annotate maps with the emotions of people. The idea is that people geotag how they are feeling automatically or by hand. This creates (city) maps with spots where people feel happy, sad, uncertain, etc. A service called mood mapper offers a filtered map/view of London based on your interests and current mood. By creating an interest profile the points of interest are filtered. Also it offers a mood selector to match points of interest to your current mood.
US 2009/0240429 describes a method for route planning for use with a vehicle navigation system. The method includes the steps of inputting a route origin and route destination on a computer separate from the navigation system. A user inputs activities or points of interest and the computer searches a point of interest database which matches the activities or points of interest inputted by the user. The computer calculates a preferred route from the origin to the route destination. The preferred route, together with data relating to the points of activity, is then wirelessly transmitted to the navigation system for subsequent display on the navigation system screen.
The problem associated with the current navigation systems is that not all people like to explore new places by planning ahead the things that they would like to see or do. Also, current navigation systems calculate routes based on time, distance and fuel usage, for example. Newer systems also take real-time data into account such as traffic congestion, free parking spaces and weather data to suggest alternative routes. In this way, a route to the destination is calculated and, based on this route, preferences of a user are matched with points of interest that can be found along the route and these points of interest are added to the route description. A problem with this system is that only those points of interest that can be found along a specific route are presented to the user, which means that the user may miss an important point of interest if it is not present along this specific route or has not been identified as a point of interest.